TheVirus wrote:Take a starfish's DNA and graft it into your own genome?

because I asked a fellow researcher if you could take the amputated limb wound from the axolotl (salamander) that regenerates its own limb quite well, and put it on a mouse's amputated limb wound, in order to see if the regeneration factor present in the axolotl would flow into the mouse and let the mouse regenerate its own limb too. Apparently that sort of stuff is frowned upon. Though they have taken extracts from axolotl's regenerating wound epithelium and put it on mammalian myotube cells to see what would happen:http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/1171 ... rom=pubmedSo apparently there is something in the extract that starts the process of regeneration (there is a process: wound epithelium covers the wound/without a fibrous clot, dedifferentiation (how far back is a matter of debate) of cells near the wound, then proliferation of these dedifferentiated cells into a mass called a blastema, and then redifferentiation of the cells back into their specific cells and tissues), though in mammals, even with the regenerating extract, regeneration seems to stop by the dedifferentation part. I am aptly to agree that I think we cannot use exactly what is in the axolotl that makes it regenerate, but perhaps how the factor works in the axolotl should be studied and then design one for mammals (and all the other DNA bearing life).Check out this site on axolotl regeneration of a limb:http://darwin.bio.uci.edu/~mrjc/regen.htmlCheck out the movie!

IMO gene therapy is based on stem cell experimentation. They just want to get a hold of Embryonic Stem Cells and manipulate them into differentiation into the desired cell type. I would like to be able to manipulate the organism's own cell into regenerating the desired cell type into what the organism's developmental path has already established. I guess it is just which end do you want to start at. It is just that everything is right there. Just have to figure out how to access it and manipulate it the way you desire. Nature has shown us that it can be done with the salamanders, and even us humans (though it is minimal, and yes probably a different mechanism to regenerate a liver which is of one tissue type as oppose to regenerating a whole limb composed of different cells/tissues/parts).

Don't you think genes get stress out and maybe a little therapy may help them? Especially those embryonic stem cell ones? They are the worst! Stressed out about differentiatiing into this or that or just duplicating themselves one more time. Oh the pressure! Especially if isolated and cultured in a lab, with no environmental clues for them to follow. I think a little gene therapy may just helpl them out.(My attempt at humor. . . . . lame I know).

helloi personally believe that since most of our genome is non coding(only 2% coding), this might have been the cause of "super natural powers" that might have existed sometime in the past. This non coding portion might have been coding at that time and as time passed and due to evolutionary forces and mutation acting, it got suppressed. There might have existed "super humans" that had the capability to do almost anything. Imagine if this turned out to be true!!!! If this had been the scenario, then what if in the distant future we can make the non coding portion coding resulting in something beyond our imagination!!!!

Also there is another aspect. This non coding region might be coding in the distant future. The non coding portion which does not code anything meaningful right now might become the coding regions in the distant future humans and that which is being expressed now gets silenced. In other words, "Super humans" are yet to come in future!!!!!

What if the whole (100%) of our DNA coded for meaningful proteins!!!!!!!

ankit: but the rest of genome is not coding, because it has no ORF, not that it wouldn't be transcribed. Au contraire, most of our genome is actually transcribed and as we are learning just recently, it has probably regulatory role.